Yeah, well, I'm going to loop to the last question on the agenda just because it fits with what Jaurelio was starting to talk about. How do you find and utilize a clinical mentor for critical career advice? And it's not just mentors, but sponsors. I don't think that you're not just looking for a mentor, you're looking for both mentors and sponsors in a variety of different areas. My answer to that is just like in a relationship, you cannot get everything you need out of one person, whether it be your significant other, or your friends, or your family. You shouldn't expect that from your mentor or your sponsor as well. And so I would say it takes a village, and certainly a village got me to where I am. And I could name at least 5, 6, 10 people off the top of my head. So let's hear from you guys, how did you find your mentor or sponsor? And I'm using that plurally as well. Some of your experiences, Allison. So I actually, I didn't have a whole lot of mentors going through training. As a resident, I saw very little in terms of female presence in the cardiology division at my training program. I was at UNC, Chapel Hill at the time. And I believe there were two women on the faculty, the total faculty for cardiology. And they weren't my mentors. And after I got in the cath lab as a second year fellow, one of the male physicians actually was like, this is kind of where you belong. This is where you're happy, you thrive here. And he really kind of took me under his wing. And I'd say he was probably the primary mentor for me and continues to be somebody that I talk to periodically when I have questions, even now, about career path. And so it is important to realize that men can be just as good of mentors, if not sometimes even better mentors to women. So it doesn't have to be, I always thought I needed to find a female mentor. And it doesn't have to be that way. Rania, how about you? I think lots of people that talk about mentors talk about mentors for different periods of their career or sort of different aspects. And I would say that that's definitely been true for me. I think probably my major mentor sponsor, particularly in the beginning of my career, is male. And I don't think that I have a female interventionalist kind of mentor. But there are other women in our department that our friendships have grown. And they're a little bit ahead. And I would say that they probably provide some mentorship as well. I wouldn't underestimate the power of peer mentoring. And that as well, yep. That's huge. Your colleagues alone can teach you so much. Yeah, I agree with that. I think there's certain practices where you may not have as much mentorship as other practices. So that's something to, if you're especially early in your career, something important to look for in your practice. I think what your experience was, Allison, is not necessarily that common where having somebody that really took you under their arm. But I think people that have that experience, I think that's really valuable. That doesn't mean you got to do what they're doing. But they're basically committing to helping you along. And I think that that's really valuable when you find that. Yeah. I'm going to move on to some of the questions that were submitted by the attendees. One of them was, what do you do, we kind of touched on this, what do you do about undermining colleagues? Because I know that all of us have had this happen to us. You're lying if you say you haven't. Megan, do you want to answer that first? I will say one thing about sponsorship, which is so different from mentoring. When Allison said, I had to have the guy next to me say that it was his idea. So when he says it's his idea, that is not sponsorship. That is sexism. And sponsorship is when someone sits next to you and says, I want to give something up in order for you to succeed. And I understand that we don't live in an environment where it's a zero-sum game. I'm definitely going to benefit from giving something up to see you succeed. But I'm going to step back from that position. And that's where I think we have a big gap in interventional cardiology for women. Is sponsorship in an environment where people believe it's not a zero-sum game? And I think it's because when our clients are when the people that started the specialty before we came started it with a very specific ethos. And that was, there's going to be one cowboy and he's going to be the man. And it's going to be awesome. If you're that guy, no one can do what you can do. And that's harmful to all the other people in the practice. But if we start to move into an environment where we say there is plenty for everybody. And when I support the person next to me, things are better for everyone. Then I think we get to the kind of future that we want. And that leads to better patient care and innovation. So I am still looking for good examples of sponsors of true sponsors. And when I hear stories about, which we all have, gosh, I perceived that maybe the woman in my practice would be that person. And she was not able to step up to that. Remember that's because she is in that environment where everyone has told her, this is a zero sum game. There will be a spot for one woman at the table and that will be it. And that's not on her. That's on the environment around. And once we're able to change that environment, and I think only by being in positions of power, whether it be cath lab director or chief of cardiology of which we are still in the incredible minority. Remember less than 1% of cath lab directors are women. Once we get in those positions, we can start to create the cultures that we want where we say we wanna have a culture of sponsorship where we're lifting up people around us. And there's no doubt. Once you look to people and say, how can you not see that that's gonna benefit you? There's no doubt that it will. So then why do people undermine? Why do people do the opposite of that? And I think it's because we have not created an understanding yet of what is to gain, that they're still holding on to that culture of one cowboy, one person, one person who's gonna have the reputation, who's gonna be seen as the person who can save the day. I really don't think it's about money. I think it's about ego and about a feeling of self-worth, of feeling valued. So I think we can create cultures where we can generate those feelings in a way that it's not just for one person. That is what I hope Sky can do. That's what I hope the group of us can do, the innovation we can bring. Because I have no doubt that that is gonna lead to cooler device designs, better patient care, improved communication, greater technical skills, just like those of you that were sharing the way that you were leading in terms of bringing new procedures to your labs. That's exactly what we're talking about. You're not saying I'm gonna be the one radialist. You're saying, let's all be radialists. It'll be sweet. We can all do it. It's not the one person. Everyone now in that hospital is radial. The most complex interventions are done radially. The staff love it, right? It's so wonderful for them too, meaning the whole system benefits from that, like you said. Yeah, yeah. Rania, do you have any comments about undermining partners or colleagues? I mean, I just need to start by saying, I think that my experience is relatively unique and it probably has something to do with being in a big city and probably the partners that I live with that I have not directly experienced some of the undermining that I know some of us have definitely experienced. But I think, not just interventional cardiology in life, but the imposter syndrome that I might feel is what they're feeling as well. And they're all sort of trying to, like everybody else is trying to navigate their feeling of insecurity when somebody is kind of being prominent or doing something cool. And I think it is probably helpful, like I said before, to just try to remember, it's not me, it's them. And you gotta deal with your problems. I can't fix your problems. Honestly. And I think also I would bring up that assertiveness is important. Sometimes we're perceived, when we're assertive, we're perceived as bitches, for lack of a better word. I mean, that's what we're called names when we're assertive. And I'll give you an example. When I started practice coming out of fellowship, I was doing some complex procedures. It wasn't right after I started. I got a bunch of cases under my feet and then I started doing some complex cases and the surgeon, one of the CT surgeons, felt very threatened by that. Like, well, nobody else has done this kind of stuff before. Everybody's just given all these cases to me. So he started to come up to the control room and sit in the control room while I was doing my cases. And he would talk to the staff and he would tell them, she's being too aggressive. I never once sent him a complication in all this time. So I said to one of my partners, what should I do? He's undermining me, the staff's gonna start disrespecting me. And he's like, you've got to talk to him. I'm like, you're right. Like, why didn't I just talk to him? So I sat him down and I was like, look, you're not gonna come in here and sit and watch me do procedures and talk smack about me in front of the cath lab staff. And he never did it again, not once. And I had his utmost respect from that minute on. He was a great colleague from that time on. I just needed to kind of set him in his place. And I think some people will oftentimes, like they test the waters to see how far they can push you. I think that probably happens to everybody, whether you're a man or a woman, but I think more so for women. I think people wanna see how far they can push you and you do have to stand up for yourself. You do have to be assertive. I totally agree with you. You have to be assertive. And it's interesting that when like a male comes into, like I'm the director of the cath lab. When a male comes into the lab as an attending level, they just assume right away that they assume dominance. And you have to be very assertive. You have to be upfront. You don't have to be emotional about it, but you have to just basically say, hello, sunshine. This is not gonna happen because this is how things are gonna go. I'm willing to consider things you want to bring to the table, but we're gonna lay this straight and flat and just be as honest as possible, as polite as possible, but assertive. And then you actually establish this relationship where, okay, yes, this person's not gonna take any crap and we're gonna work collaboratively here. We're both gonna work together and learn from each other, but you can't just assume dominance when you come into a place that's run by a woman. And I think you're absolutely right that they will test the waters and they honestly don't do it consciously. They do it subconsciously. It's just, I think, it's a male trait and it's gradually coming on, but also the rest of your work environment has to be supportive of that. And they will see it and you'll have a great relationship. You'd be great friends and learn from each other and life will be good, but you have to lay the grounds really honestly from the beginning. Yeah, I mean, these are difficult conversations to have. We talk about the questions of how do you deal with bias? How do you deal with toxicity? How do you deal with these difficult situations? And many of us paused initially because it's not an easy, it's not like a one, two, three solution. We've all been through it. We've all sort of been through it in various degrees and we've all taken quite a bit of time to figure out how we're gonna address that that fits with who we are. And for me, again, it came back to peer mentorship. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by some great women, not just interventional, but general cardiology as well. It turns out you don't have to be just an interventionalist to face some of these issues. And we were just, again, I was lucky enough to go for a drink afterwards and I'd be like, I can't believe this happened to me. What do I do? I actually, I didn't even start off by saying, what did I do? But then all of a sudden, oh, I was in the same position. This is what I ultimately ended up doing. And it was really nice to hear all the different, A, I'm not by myself. This isn't just me. It's not you, it's them. I think, Alison, to your example, I think in your situation, it was probably, I mean, obviously it was the right thing for you to talk to that person, but sometimes our allies can help us as well. That the mentor that you talk to, in some situations, when you're in the case and you're not there to sort of stop the chatter, if your mentor happens to be walking around and is alerted to the situation by you, he could sort of be like, hey, she's doing a great job, knock it off. So I think that is really valuable that some of our allies can help with it too, depending on the situation. Yeah, and I think that's kind of indirectly what I was looking for when I talked to him. I kind of wanted to have some, I don't know if I was looking for someone to defend me per se, but I just wanted like that backup, that support. And it turns out that just talking to the surgeon was enough to fix the problem, but I agree with you. I mean, I think it would have been nice to have him say, look, you can't do that. I know she's talked to you about this and I'm standing behind her and I agree. You can't do that. You don't do it to us. You don't do it to the men in the group. You don't do it to her, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes you just gotta stand up for yourself. Yeah, your mentor is not always there when you're out and about. I think you can resort to your mentor, and it's great if you're in the same institution, but if you're not, you have to do it yourself. One of the things that I actually found helpful, which sounds a little bit weird, is sometimes when we start talking, or when I start talking, I might back off and not say everything I wanted to say, or, you know, so I actually would write a letter, like literally a letter, a handwritten letter, saying you did this and I really didn't like it. And, you know, this is how I'd like things to be and, you know, want to talk about it. But then in the letter, I was able to lay out all the things without being interrupted or, you know, like undermined or anything. And that really was very helpful. And it was such a positive, I really liked that the person on the other end had such a positive reaction to the letter. You know, they could have had a negative reaction, but it's not in their best interest. So you have to stand your ground and lay out what it is that you're not happy about. And you'll actually find that that works well. And then it opens that communication of, well, you actually might be doing something that upsets them and they are able to talk to you about it. So you're able to be on even keel, you're leveled. You know, they're not hearing you're here and not the opposite either. You get on even keel with honesty and not kind of retaining things that are bothering you about a situation. Just talk about it. It actually will help.

importance of finding a mentor

mentorship in career development

diversity in mentorship

challenges faced by women in male-dominated fields

creating a culture of support and collaboration